I usually make a standard dough with 100% KA Bread flour. My wife wanted me to try the whole-wheat dough. Now I have succeeded with this in the past, but it has not been NY style and I did not use standard techniques.

*Hold your clenched fists together vertically out in front of you (thumbs on top and pinky fingers on the bottom).

*Lift your thumbs a bit, enough so that you can get your index finger knuckles underneath the edge of the dough closest to you; then grasp the top of the dough with your thumbs and lift the dough straight up off the peel.

*The dough should now be draped forwards and downwards from your fists, resting mostly on your index fingers, with your thumbs only gripping the outer inch or so of dough to keep it from slipping out of your hands. The bulk of the dough will immediately begin to droop from your hands due to gravity; rotate the dough smoothly and quickly with your fists so that the dough droops evenly on all sides.

I use only home ground whole-wheat flour (frozen immediately after grinding to prevent rancidity).

This time I use a 50/50 mix of KA bread and fresh double ground (no freezing) soft wheat flour. (Ground and run though grinder again !!!!!) I mixed with standard techniques (see above). Retard in fridge for 3 days. I thought all was well, until I used my/canadadave's shaping procedure and dough feel apart. Disaster? I thought so. The first pizza lost all its gas and turned out way too thin. I realized the trouble and had to shape the following 2 pies very carefully !!! and I do mean very carefully. The pizza suprisingly turned out pretty good. I must admit that it was not quite as good as my normal NY style, but a decent interpretation. I don't think I will every make 50/50 whole wheat NY style pizza again due to the shaping problems.

I have not tried what you did but if I had to guess I would say that the problem you experienced may have been due to the use of the freshly ground wheat flour. As you may know, the two proteins (amino acids) in flour that are responsible for forming gluten are glutenin and gliadin. In order to get a strong and elastic and extensible gluten structure, the gluten and gliadin have to be oxidized, usually by aging them for a period of time. If this is not done, the gluten structure may not be strong enough to hold the gases formed during fermentation. That may have been the effect you experienced.

According to this excerpt I found, I would think that you could let your freshly ground whole wheat flour just sit in the refrigerator for a few weeks (to keep it from going rancid) and stir it once in a while to expose it to air (oxygen):

Any flour develops better baking qualities if allowed to rest for several weeks after milling. Freshly milled flour produces sticky doughs and products with less volume than those made with aged flour.

This is the second time I used soft wheat for a yeast bread. I usually use hard red winter.The reason that I used soft is that it creates a better texture. I discovered this by accident when I made pita bread a few weeks ago. The dough handled much better with the soft than with the hard wheat.

I know that the hard wheat had more gluten, but I believe the coarse/hard germ causes problems when stretching and shaping. This dough seemed to handle well when fresh, but changed after 3 days in fridge. At that point, it seemed to lose integrety. One may even say "over relaxed" dough. Is this possible?

Add bread and whole wheat flours together along with the VWG plus the water together in mixer to autolyse for 30 - 40 minutes. Then add the remaing ingredients together and mix for 15 minutes on 2nd speed. Check to see if dough will windowpane. Then I cut it in half and let it rise in the fridge in covered oiled bowls for 24 hours ( thats as long as I can wait !) and pull it out about 2-3 hours before cooking time. I end up with 2 - 13.5 inch pizzas with about .090 -.100 thickness. and it makes a good place for some BBQ chicken to rest on enjoy!